ART CITIES:Zurich-Jean Marie Appriou
Since he graduated from the Regional School of Art in Rennes in 2010, Jean-Marie Appriou has created a substantial body of work referencing folklore, beliefs systems, and the use of traditional technics. His textured and expressive sculptures often bear roughly and heavily worked surfaces, evoking the laborious manual implications of their making processes. Rather than collaborating with craftsmen, Appriou learned smelting, forging, woodcarving, fur tanning and casting techniques online.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive
For his solo exhibition “November” Jean-Marie Appriou asks us to consider the moment of the earth’s seasonal cycle in which we presently find ourselves. It is November, a period of transition: the last days of the harvest. Death, all of a sudden, is a welcome and necessary impending state, signaling return to the earth, to our plates, to darkness, to interior spaces. In recent years, Jean-Marie Appriou has developed an approach to sculpture in which he appropriates traditional craftsmanship and subverts it to expand its potential. He explores materials, such as aluminium, glass, bronze and terracotta, using unconventional processes. From these alchemic experiments emerge forms that relate to and complement one another to create different scenarios. This fantastical world, which inspires wonder and occasionally unease, draws on a variety of influences from Egyptian mythology to Pre-Raphaelite painting, from science-fiction literature to film and cartoon strips. For the use of the materials the artist says “I started with ceramics and I’m coming back to it, especially since I just built a large oven in my atelier to bake bas-reliefs. What I also like is the fact that everything is done internally. I model the clay before putting it to dry and bake. There is not much time between conception and the moment I pick up the object. I value the trace of the hand: I met craftsmen with whom I collaborate, notably when I work with glass, which is a material you cannot improvise with. It led me to work with the aluminum foundry. I sculpt all my models, on scale and in the workshop, before they go to the foundry. Then, with my team, we go see the founders and we make them step out of their knowledge. We reconsider what they see as “mistakes” from a technical point of view. Still, I don’t want to let a work slip away and get it back months later, because that would no longer be my identity”. Observing the principle of analogy between subject and method, Jean-Marie Appriou gives his ceramics a frankly telluric dimension, never hesitating, for example, to complement mineral matter with fur or other items from the living world. This is sculpture that involves shaping, firing, transformation and intermingling in terms of meaning as well as materials. Just as his flamboyance finds expression in raw technique, folklore leads him to formal subtlety and profundity, notably in the beings on show here: vampires and mythological figures.
Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zahnradstrasse 21, Zurich, Duration: 10/11-22/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.presenhuber.com
